The Worm Ouroboros

by E R Eddison

  “Thou dost us wrong, madam,” cried Goldry. “Never hath Demoniand used suchlike arts against her enemies.”

  Lord Brandoch Daha looked swiftly at him, and stepped idly forward, saying, “I know not what art hath wrought yon goblet, but ’tis strangely like to one I saw in Impland. Yet fairer is this, and of more just proportions.” But Prezmyra forestalled his outstretched hand, and quietly drew the cup towards her out of reach. As sword crosses sword, the glance of her green eyes crossed his, and she said, “Think not that you have a worse enemy left on earth than me. I it was that sent Corsus and Corinius to trample Demonland in the mire. Had I but some spark of masculine virtue, some soul at least of you should yet be loosed squealing to the shades to attend my dear ones ere I set sail. But I have none. Kill me then, and let me go.”

  Juss, whose sword was bare in his hand, smote it home in the scabbard and stepped towards her. But the table was betwixt them, and she drew back to the dais where Corund lay in state. There, like some triumphant goddess, she stood above them, the cup of venom in her hand. “Come not beyond the table, my lords,” she said, “or I drain this cup to your damnation.”

  Brandoch Daha said, “The dice are thrown, O Juss. And the Queen hath won the hazard.”

  “Madam,” said Juss, “I swear to you there shall no force nor restraint be put upon you, but honour only and worship shown you, and friendship if you will. That surely mightest thou take of us for thy brother’s sake.” Thereat she looked terribly upon him, and he said, “Only on this wild night lay not hands upon yourself. For their sake, that even now haply behold us out of the undiscovered barren lands, beyond the dismal lake, do not this.”

  Still facing them, the cup still aloft in her right hand, Prezmyra laid her left hand lightly on the brazen plates of Corund’s byrny that cased the mighty muscles of his breast. Her hand touched his beard, and drew back suddenly; but in an instant she laid it gently again on his breast. Somewhat her orient loveliness seemed to soften for a passing minute in the altering light, and she said, “I was given to Corund young. This night I will sleep with him, or reign with him, among the mighty nations of the dead.”

  Juss moved as one about to speak, but she stayed him with a look, and the lines of her body hardened again and the lioness looked forth anew in her peerless eyes. “Hath your greatness,” she said, “so much outgrown your wit, that you think I will abide to be your pensioner, that have been a Princess in Pixyland, a Queen of far-fronted Impland, and wife to the greatest soldier in this hold of Carcë, which till this day hath been the only scourge and terror of the world? O my lords of Demonland, good comfortable fools, speak to me no more, for your speech is folly. Go, doff your hats to the silly hind that runneth on the mountain; pray her gently dwell with you amid your stalled cattle, when you have slain her mate. Shall the blackening frost, when it hath blasted and starved all the sweet garden flowers, say to the rose, Abide with us; and shall she harken to such a wolfish suit?”

  So speaking she drank the cup; and turning from those lords of Demonland as a queen turneth her from the unregarded multitude, kneeled gently down by Corund’s bier, her white arms clasped about his head, her face pillowed on his breast.

  When Juss spake, his voice was choked with tears. He commanded Bremery that they should take up the bodies of Corsus and Zenambria and those sons of Corund and of Corsus that lay poisoned and dead in that hall and on the morrow give them reverent burial. “And for the Lord Corinius I will that ye make a bed of state, that he may lie in this hall to-night, and to-morrow will we lay him in howe before Carcë, as is fitting for so renowned a captain. But great Corund and his lady shall none depart one from the other, but in one grave shall they rest, side by side, for their love sake. Ere we be gone I will rear them such a monument as beseemeth great kings and princes when they die. For royal and lordly was Corund, and a mighty man at arms, and a fighter clean of hand, albeit our bitter enemy. Wondrous it is with what cords of love he bound to him this unparagoned Queen of his. Who bath known her like among women for trueness and highness of heart? And sure none was ever more unfortunate.”

  Now went they forth into the outer ward of Carcë. The night bore still some signs of that commotion of the skies that had so lately burst forth and passed away, and some torn palls of thundercloud yet hung athwart the face of heaven. Betwixt them in the swept places of the sky a few stars shivered, and the moon, more than half waxen towards her full, was sinking over Tenemos. Some faint breath of autumn was abroad, and the Demons shuddered a little, fresh from the heavy air of the great banquet hall. The ruins of the Iron Tower smoking to the sky, and the torn and tumbled masses of masonry about it, showed monstrous in the gloom as fragments of old chaos; and from them and from the riven earth beneath steamed up pungent fumes as of brimstone burning. Ever busily, back and forth through those sulphurous vapours, obscene birds of the night flitted a weary round, and bats on leathern wing, fitfully and dimly seen in the uncertain mirk, save when their passage brought them dark against the moon. And from the solitudes of the mournful fen afar voices of lamentation floated on the night: wild wailing cries and sobbing noises and long moans rising and falling and quivering down to silence.

  Juss laid his hand on Goldry’s arm, saying, “There is nought earthly in these laments, nor be those that thou seest circling in the reek very bats or owls. These be his masterless familiars wailing for their Lord. Many such served him, simple earthy divels and divels of the air and of the water, held by him in thrail by sorcerous and artificial practices, coming and going and doing his will.”

  “These availed him not,” said Goldry, “nor the sword of Witchland against our might and main, that brake it asunder in his hand and slew his mighty men of valour.”

  “Yet true it is,” said Lord Juss, “that none greater hath lived on earth than King Gorice XII. When after these long wars we held him as a stag at bay, he feared not to assay a second time, and this time unaided and alone, what no man else hath so much as once performed and lived. And well he knew that that which was summoned by him out of the deep must spill and blast him utterly if he should slip one whit, as slip he did in former days, but his disciple succoured him. Behold now with what loud striking of thunder, unconquered by any earthly power, he hath his parting: with this Carcë black and smoking in ruin for his monument, these lords of Witchland and hundreds besides of our soldiers and of the Witches for his funeral bake-meats, and spirits weeping in the night for his chief mourners.”

  So came they again to the camp. And in due time the moon set and the clouds departed and the quiet stars pursued their eternal way until night’s decline; as if this night had been but as other nights: this night which had beheld the power and glory that was Witchland by such a hammer-stroke of destiny smitten in pieces.

  CHAPTER XXXIII

  QUEEN SOPHONISBA IN GALING

  Of the entertainment given by Lord Juss in Demonland to Queen Sophonisba, fosterling of the gods, and of that circumstance which, beyond all the wonders fair and lovely to behold shown her in that country, made her most to marvel: wherein is a rare example how in a fortunate world, out of all expectation, in the spring of the year, cometh a new birth.

  Now the returning months brought the season of the year when Queen Sophonisba should come according to her promise to guest with Lord Juss in Galing. And so it was that in the hush of a windless April dawn the Zimiamvian caravel that bare the Queen to Demonland rowed up the firth to Lookinghaven.

  All the east was a bower for the golden dawn. Kartadza, sharpoutlined as if cut in bronze, still hid the sun; and in the great shadow of the mountain the haven and the low hills and the groves of holm-oak and strawberry tree slumbered in a deep obscurity of blues and purples, against which the avenues of pink almond blossom and the white marble quays were bodied forth in pale wakening beauty, imaged as in a looking-glass in that tranquillity of the sea. Westward across the firth all the land was aglow with the opening day. Snow lingered still on the higher summits. Cloudless, ba
thing in the golden light, they stood against the blue: Dina, the Forks of Nantreganon, Pike o’ Shards, and all the peaks of the Thornback range and Neverdale. Morning laughed on their high ridges and kissed the woods that clung about their lower limbs: billowy woods, where rich hues of brown and purple told of every twig on all their myriad branches thick and afire with buds. White mists lay like coverlets on the water-meadows where Tivarandardale opens to the sea. On the shores of Bothrey and Scaramsey, and on the mainland near the great bluff of Thremnir’s Heugh and a little south of Owlswick, clear spaces among the birchwoods showed golden yellow: daffodils abloom in the spring.

  They rowed in to the northernmost berth and made fast the caravel. The sweetness of the almond trees was the sweetness of spring in the air, and spring was in the face of that Queen as she came with her attendants up the shining steps, her little martlets circling about her or perching on her shoulders: she to whom the Gods of old gave youth everlasting, and peace everlasting in Koshtra Belorn.

  Lord Juss and his brethren were on the quay to meet her, and the Lord Brandoch Daha. They bowed in turn, kissing her hands and bidding her welcome to Demonland. But she said, “Not to Demonland alone, my lords, to the world again. And toward which of all earth’s harbours should I steer, and toward which land if not to this land of yours, who have by your victories brought peace and joy to all the world? Surely peace slept not more softly on the Moruna in old days before the names of Gonce and Witchland were heard in that country, than she shall sleep for us on this new earth and Demonland, now that those names are drowned for ever under the whirlpools of oblivion and darkness.”

  Juss said, “O Queen Sophonisba, desire not that the names of great men dead should be forgot for ever. So should these wars that we last year brought to so mighty a conclusion to make us undisputed lords of the earth go down to oblivion with them that fought against us. But the fame of these things shall be on the lips and in the songs of men from one generation to another, so long as the world shall endure.”

  They took horse and rode up from the harbour to the upper road, and so through open pastures on to Havershaw Tongue. Lambs frisked on the dewy meadows beside the road; blackbirds flew from bush to bush; larks trilled in the sightless sky; and as they came down through the woods to Beckfoot wood-pigeons cooed in the trees, and squirrels peeped with beady eyes. The Queen spoke little. These and all shy things of the woods and field held her in thrall, charming her to a silence that was broken only now and then by a little exclamation of joy. The Lord Juss, who himself also loved these things, watched her delight.

  Now they wound up the steep ascent from Beckfoot, and rode into Galing by the Lion Gate. The avenue of Irish yews was lined by soldiers of the bodyguards of Juss, Goldry, and Spitfire, and Brandoch Daha. These, in honour of their great masters and of the Queen, lifted their spears aloft, while trumpeters blew three fanfares on silver trumpets. Then to an accompaniment of lutes and theorbos and citherns moving above the pulse of muffled drums, a choir of maidens sang a song of welcome, strewing the path before the lords of Demonland and the Queen with sweet white hyacinths and narcissus blooms, while the ladies Mevrian and Armelline, more lovely than any queens of earth, waited at the head of the golden staircase above the inner court to greet Queen Sophonisba come to Galing.

  A hard matter it were to tell of all the pleasures prepared for Queen Sophonisba and for her delight by the lords of Demonland. The first day she spent among the parks and pleasure gardens of Galing, where Lord Juss showed her his great lime avenues, his yew-houses, his fruit gardens and sunk gardens and his private walks and bowers; his walks of creeping thyme which being trodden on sends up sweet odours to refresh the treader; his ancient water-gardens beside the Brankdale Beck, whither the water nymphs resort in summer and are seen under the moon singing and combing their hair with combs of gold.

  On the second day he showed her his herb gardens, disclosing to her the secret properties of herbs, wherein he was deeply learned. There grew that Zamalenticion, which being well beaten up with fat without salt is sovran for all wounds. And Dittany, which if eaten soon puts out the arrow and healeth the wounds; and not only by its presence stayeth snakes wheresoever they be handy to it, but by reason of its smell carried by wind and they smell it they die. And Mandragora, which being taken into the middle of an house compelleth all evils out of the house, and relieveth also headaches and produceth sleep. Also he showed her Sea Holly in his garden, that is born in secret places and in wet ones, and the root of it is as the head of that monster which men name the Gorgon, and the root-twigs have both eyes and nose and colour of serpents. Of this he told her how when taking up the root, a man must see to it that no sun shine on it, and he who would carve it must avert his head, for it is not permitted that man may see that root unharmed.

  The third day Juss showed the Queen his stables, where were his war-horses and horses for the chase and for chariot racing stabled in stalls with furniture of silver, and much she marvelled at his seven white mares, sisters, so like that none might tell one from another, given him in days gone by by the priests of Artemis in the lands beyond the sunset. They were immortal, bearing ichor in their veins, not blood; and the fire of it showed in their eyes like lamps burning.

  The fourth night and the fifth the Queen was at Drepaby, guesting with Lord Goldry Bluszco and the Princess Armelline, that were wedded in Zajë Zaculo last Yule; and the sixth and seventh nights at Owlswick, and there Spitfire made her lordly entertainment. But Lord Brandoch Daha would not have the Queen go yet to Krothering, for he had not yet made fair again his gardens and pleasaunces and restored his rich and goodly treasures to his mind after their ill handling by Corinius. And it was not his will that she should look on Krothering Castle until all was there stablished anew according to its ancient glory.

  The eighth day she came again to Galing, and now Lord Juss showed her his study, with his astrolabes of orichalc, figured with all the signs of the Zodiac and the mansions of the moon, standing a tall man’s height above the floor, and his perspectives and gloves and crystals and hollow looking-glasses; and great crystal globes where he kept homunculi whom he had made by secret processes of nature, both men and women, less than a span long, as beautiful as one could wish to see in their little coats, eating and drinking and going their ways in those mighty globes of crystal where his art had given them being.

  Every night, whether at Galing, Owlswick, or Drepaby Mire, was feasting held in her honour, with music and dancing and merry-making and all delight, and poetical recitations and feats of arms and horsemanship, and masques and interludes the like whereof hath not been seen on earth for beauty and wit and all magnificence.

  Now was the ninth day come of the Queen’s guesting in Demonland, and it was the eve of Lord Juss’s birthday, when all the great ones in the land were come together, as four years ago they came, to do honour on the morrow unto him and unto his brethren as was their wont aforetime. It was fine bright weather, with every little while a shower to bring fresh sweetness to the air, colour and refreshment to the earth, and gladness to the sunshine. Juss walked with the Queen in the morning in the woods of Moongarth Bottom, now bursting into leaf; and after their mid-day meal showed her his treasuries cut in the live rock under Galing Castle, where she beheld bars of gold and silver piled like trunks of trees; unhewn crystals of ruby, chrysoprase, or hyacinth, so heavy a strong man might not lift them; stacks of ivory in the tusk, piled to the ceiling; chests and jars filled with perfumes and costly spices, ambergris, frankincense, sweet-scented sandalwood and myrrh and spikenard; cups and beakers and eared wine-jars and lamps and caskets made of pure gold, worked and chased with the forms of men and women and birds and beasts and creeping things, and ornamented with jewels beyond price, margarites and pink and yellow sapphires, smaragds and chrysoberyls and yellow diamonds.

  When the Queen had had her fill of gazing on these, he carried her to his great library where statues stood of the nine Muses about Apollo, and all the walls w
ere hidden with books: histories and songs of old days, books of philosophy, alchymy and astronomy and art magic, romances and music and lives of great men dead and great treatises of all the arts of peace and war, with pictures and illuminated characters. Great windows opened southward on the garden from the library, and climbing rose-trees and plants of honeysuckle and evergreen magnolia clustered about the windows. Great chairs and couches stood about the open hearth where a fire of cedar logs burned in winter time. Lamps of moonstones self-effulgent shaded with cloudy green tourmaline stood on silver stands on the table and by each couch and chair, to give light when the day was over; and all the air was sweet with the scent of dried rose-leaves kept in ancient bowls and vases of painted earthenware.

  Queen Sophonisba said, “My lord, I love this best of all the fair things thou hast shown me in thy castle of Galing: here where all trouble seems a forgotten echo of an ill world left behind. Surely my heart is glad, O my friend, that thou and these other lords of Demonland shall now enjoy your goodly treasures and fair days in your dear native land in peace and quietness all your lives.”

  The Lord Juss stood at the window that looked westward across the lake to the great wall of the Scarf. Some shadow of a noble melancholy hovered about his sweet dark countenance as his gaze rested on a curtain of rain that swept across the face of the mountain wall, half veiling the high rock summits. “Yet think, madam,” said he, “that we be young of years. And to strenuous minds there is an unquietude in over-quietness.”